October 29, 2008 by Zale.

Here’s a great discussion of Planned Parenthood’s connection to racism and the overall injustice known as Abortion.

Posted in Right To Life, General Law | No Comments »

October 14, 2008 by Zale.

Punitive damages are those that punish another party for fraudulent, intentional, reckless or malicious behavior.  Recently plaintiff Mohr received a verdict over $53M for the deaths of his family members as a result of a motor vehicle accident.  However, he, as the administrator of the estates of the deceased, will not be able to collect all of that.

The courts don’t like, what they consider, excessive punitive damage awards.  Ever since State Farm v. Campbell, the court likes to keep punitive damage awards under 9 times the compensatory damage award.

In Mr. Mohr’s instance, the Tennessee Court of Appeals said that a 4 times multiplier would be sufficient under the U.S. Constitution, so he loses $13.8M.  At the end of the day, Mohr’s attorneys did a good job of finding the issues with the design of the Mohr’s vehicle and enabling the estate to collect more than it would have, had this just been your average car wreck.  However, had Chrysler taken better care of designing the Caravan in question, maybe Mr. Mohr would not have had to fight this battle in court, and maybe he would still have his loved ones.

In case you want to read the whole case, here it is.

If you have lost a family member due to an automobile accident in Tennessee, contact our office to discuss your case.  Fatalities are never easy or comfortable to deal with, but after being an insurance adjuster for over 11 years,  I’ve dealt with many of them.

Posted in Litigation, Injury Law | 1 Comment »

October 13, 2008 by Zale.

I’m hoping that this will be a fun activity for all.  I have a pretty good number of subscribers to this blog, but I’ve not gotten many comments.  So, that tells me that I have a good number of passive readers.  Thank you to all.

Here’s where you get to participate.  What’s your question?  Surely you have to have some legal question you would like to  have addressed.  So here’s your chance.  I’ll address the questions in upcoming posts.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Posted in Criminal Law, Litigation, Negotiations, Diminished Value, Injury Law, Insurance Practices, Business Law, Right To Life, Insurance Law, General Law | No Comments »

October 10, 2008 by Zale.

I know that I’m a bit of an anomaly, since I am a conservative trial lawyer (yes, we do exist and I will tell Sasquatch and Nessi hello for you).  Like many Americans, frivolous litigation just drives me nuts.

Here’s a good example.  The headline is: “Judge Tosses Hair Dye Lawsuit for Blonde Who Had Less Fun as Brunette”.  Apparently this lady had to be on anti-depressants since she claimed that brown hair dye was in a box labeled “blonde”.  “Oh the humanity!”  I’m pretty sure that if this lady was on anti-depressants, it wasn’t solely due to this hair incident.  Wouldn’t it have made more sense just to go to the salon instead of the shrink?

Posted in You've got to be kidding!, Litigation | No Comments »

October 6, 2008 by Zale.

Medicare has announced that it is not paying for medical errors, also known as medical malpractice.  Huh?  What happens if there is a dispute as to whether or not there was actually a medical error?  Sounds to me like the patient is going to be the loser in that battle.

I see a two pronged problem here.  I don’t believe in big government programs, so I don’t really like Medicare in the first place, BUT there are those that have come to rely on it whether or not its a good program.  So, the first problem is this big government program in which governmnet is inept at running.  The second problem here has to do with Medicare’s ability to subrogate.

Subrogation is how insurers get their money back from the liable party.  If Medicare were effective at subrogation, then they would not need to do this.  They have every advantage in the world at collecting their subrogation, and still it appears that they are ineffective.

So what we have here is a government program that is ineffective at part of what it should be able to do, so its going to push those costs off onto the patient.  Unfortunately, this is why people need their own attorney in dealing the medical malpractice.

Here’s the article if you would like to read more.

Posted in Injury Law, Insurance Practices, Insurance Law | No Comments »